By CRISTINA OLDS and ELENA E. GIORGILos Alamos
At 6 p.m. today, the Los Alamos County Council will hold a hearing and voting on resolution 17-08, which advocates for an expansion of the duties of the sheriff’s office.
Right now our sheriff has very minor, mostly bureaucratic duties, but this new resolution would turn the sheriff’s office into a second law enforcement agency with duties equivalent to the police department. You can view the full resolution here.
We invite our county councilors to vote NO to the resolution based on the following reasons:
- The proposed resolution regarding the duties of the sheriff’s office stands to increase the current roles of the sheriff’s office. When the citizens of Los Alamos voted to keep the sheriff’s office, they voted to keep the office as it was, not to expand its powers.
- Cities that have both a PD and a sheriff’s office give the two agencies distinct jurisdictions. To have two law enforcement agencies overseeing the same jurisdiction would not only add unnecessary costs to Los Alamos tax payers, but it would create confusion and possible conflicts between the two agencies.
- The highly trained and experienced LA Police Department has full jurisdiction to perform law enforcement duties in Los Alamos County, and a sheriff’s office is a duplication of efforts and expenses.
- LAPD has been capably handling all of the duties proposed by the resolution to be assigned to the sheriff and for far less than the sheriff’s $200K proposed budget.
- Finally, in the eventuality of oversight of police (corruption), the individual cases would be handled by NM State Police and the FBI, which are far more qualified organizations to investigate concerns about the LAPD.
